[From Edward Phillips, Theatrum Poetarum, or a Compleat Collection of the Poets (1673).]
Phillips (1630-ca. 1636) was educated by his uncle John Milton and wrote a number of historical and scholarly works. The Theatrum Poetarum is set of summary lives of the poets, which grew out of a Latin catalogue of English poets, Compendiosa Enumeratio Poetarum, published as an appendix to Johannes Buchler's Thesaurus (1669). The Theatrum Poetarum was later published in an enlarged version by Sir Egerton Brydges, as volume 1 of Theatrum Poetarum Anglicanorum (1800).
In his continuation of Sir Richard Baker's A Chronicle of the Kings of England (1643), published in 1660, Phillips included Jonson in a list of the 'Resplendent' poets of Charles I's time (503). When he revised the list in the 1670 edition, Jonson was highlighted as a poet who 'by his profound Learning and Judgement, shewed a Poet was to be as well made as born', while Shakespeare, though not named, must be the poet celebrated as one who 'though he wanted Learning, made as high and noble flights as fancy could advance without it' (604).
*****************************************Benjamin Johnson, the most learned, judicious and correct, generally so accounted, of our English Comedians, and the more to be admired for being so, for that neither the height of natural for he was no Shakespear, nor the cost of Extraordinary Education; for he is reported but a Bricklayers Son, but his own proper Industry and Addiction to Books advanct him to this perfection: In three of his Comedies, namely the Fox, Alchymist and Silent Woman he may be compared, in the Judgement of Learned Men, for Decorum, Language, and well Humouring of the parts, as well with the chief of the Ancient Greek and Latin Comedians as the prime of the modern Italians, who have been judg'd the best of Europe for a happy vein in Comedies, nor is his Bartholomew-Fair much short of them; as for his other Comedies Cinthia's Revells, Poetaster, and the rest, let the name of Ben Johnson protect them against whoever shall think fit to be severe in censure against them: The Truth is, his Tragedies Sejanus and Catiline seem to have in them more of an artificial and inflate than of a pathetical and naturally Tragic height: In the rest of his Poetry, for he is not wholly Dramatic, as his Underwoods, Epigrams, &c. he is sometimes bold and strenuous, sometimes Magisterial, sometimes Lepid and full enough of Conceit, and sometimes a Man as other Men are.
(19-20)